Product Reviews

Cubase, a major prop of the MIDI music industry wherever computers, instruments and nerds cluster together, lives on many platforms and has done so since the heyday of the Atari ST. As its many users and fans already know, it is an immensely powerful, thoroughly demanding and staggeringly complicated set of music-making, processing and exporting modules, sequencing, notation, audio recording, digital signal processing and a load more. It comes in a number of different packages, depending on your particular slant.

VST (for Virtual Studio Technology) 3.02 is the newest and most potent version, requiring a Power Mac as a minimum platform. And don't get the idea that any old rubbish Power Mac will do: some PowerPC Performas, most PowerBooks and all PowerPC upgrade cards (for 64K Macs) are out. In fact, makers Steinberg really thinks you should have a 150MHz machine ito run version 3.02 properly. (Version 3.01 was less demanding, only stipulating 110MHz.) Cubase is the only major program known to me that requires you to upgrade your computer every time you upgrade the software, and although MIDI professionals may be able to afford this. most users can't.

Before you boot up the program, the major change you notice is that the Audio Effects folder has been abolished in favour of a VSTplugins folder where you keep all the exciting audio processing modules, like reverberation, stereo echo, flanging and so on.

There is little apparent change in the bootstrap interface. It's when you look around that the alterations become evident. One change is the new evidence of serious support for QuickTime-related activities - movies and all - grouped under a single menu. I assume this is an attempt by Steinberg to mop up the only area of digital music in which it does not yet have a commanding presence. And, of course, this is also the Netwards Ho! route (although I can't see people laying out £350 to jazz up their Web-site banner with a jingle or two).

But Cubase's shining star of a feature is the effortless and powerful way it binds direct-to-disk audio recording (using the best audio-buffering system in existence) with MIDI sequencing - up to 32 tracks in all, or over 100 if you approach the matter in a virtual spirit. The (audio) Master fader module can now send up to four effects to the master stereo pair on top of the four that each audio track may already hold. FX City! (At least when more plug-ins show up, as doubtless they will). In-program audio mix-down is now also handled differently: an Export Audio option from both the Master module and the File

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menu enables you to mix down any two or more audio tracks into a single combined new track, which may replace your existing audio if you're running out of space, or can be exported to another arrangement. And that's more or less it, bar the QuickTime stuff and one or two minor interface tweaks.

As a newcomer to Cubase and MIDI generally, although not to the Mac, I have to say that for all its astonishing power and efficiency the program is not without flaws, most of which grow from the makers' determination to make it do everything. To users of rivalware on other platforms, it may be enviably easy to use: to an old Mac hand it suffers from a bad case of the Macromind Directors or (even worse) Word Sixes: top-heavy and cluttered almost to the point of lunacy, and surely flying in the face of the New Thinking? Steinberg already hives off the notational features into an entirely separate program; perhaps they should consider breaking up Cubase VST into parts, to be assembled as the user wishes (and can afford). That way this major product could be made more accessible - especially to those Lesser Breeds Without The Law who have fewer than 150MHz on tap. The company could make even more money and everyone would be as happy as pigs in comfortable surroundings.

The first major plug-in written for Cubase VST consists of a set of superior sound-processing modules, such as compressors, limiters and a very posh reverberation unit. In fact, it is structured, through a series of hot-linked modules, to work in 'bolt-on' mode with other important software, notably Soundedit 16. But Cubase is surely the main target.

It was disconcerting to find this heavily dongled item would not run with my then newly-purchased copy of Cubase 3.01. A phone call to Israel established that WAVES would work only with version 3.02m which hadn't yet shipped. A four-week wait followed before I finally acquired VST 3.02 and was able to load this potent-looking plug-in.

It loaded fine, bar a mystery dialog which invited me to select a WAVES module, and then reappeared after a few hesitant moments to ask the same question again before disappearing (no modules were, in fact, loaded). To test it, I loaded an arrangement containing some audio tracks and duly selected the fab-looking Trueverb module. It looked terrific but failed to do anything other than cut the signal entirely. Another phone call to Israel elicited the admission that this particular module won't work on anything less than 120MHz (mine is 110MHz) and,. no, this isn't documented.

Allow me to say it ought to be documented - especially as this is one of those products which insist on a hardware dongle but provide no printed manuals whatsoever. Everything they tell you about these very complicated modules comes as HTML files, and presumably has a separate existence somewhere on the Web, thereby passing the printing costs and inconvenience burden onto the customer in theoretical exchange for more up-to-date info. Except that in this case at least the info wasn't that up to date.

It all worked flawlessly and impressively with Soundedit 16 but somehow this was small consolation.